Mark Cuban: 'Would I invest in the cannabis industry? No.'

In November, nine states will vote on whether to legalize
marijuana, reports
Business Insider's Ben Gilbert, and five of those votes will
include recreational use as well as medicinal: Massachusetts,
Maine, California, Arizona, and Nevada.

If those ballots pass along with medicinal marijuana ballot
measures in Montana and Florida, reports
Business Insider's Melia Robinson, those markets will account
for $2.7 billion in additional marijuana sales in 2018. Research
by Arcview Market Research, a leading publisher of
marijuana market research, and its big-data
partner New
Frontier projects this number to
grow to nearly $8 billion by 2020.

At a late September breakfast in Beverly Hills, Entrepreneur's
Kim Lachance Shandrow asked five of the six Shark Tank Sharks
how they feel about the growing marijuana industry, and whether
they'd invest.

Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban told her he'd keep his money out of
it:

"Would I invest in the cannabis industry? No. Not because I have
anything against pot. I don't care. But right now it's a gold
rush. When everybody's rushing in it's hard to keep track of what
everybody's doing because there's a new startup every single day.

"I think the oversaturation of the market creates a very
difficult challenge. Plus, Snoop's in it [laughs]. And if Snoop
Dogg's in it, it's over for everyone else."

He went on to highlight the difficulty of getting involved in an
industry so hampered by regulations and red tape, and said again
he thinks we're late to the game:

"There's a saying that I live by: 'First there are the
innovators. Then there are the imitators. Then there are the
idiots.' The three I's. You have to know which one you are, and I
think already in the cannabis industry, we've at least gotten to
the imitators and we may already be to the idiots."

You can read Cuban's entire reaction and the rest of the Sharks'
responses — with the exception of Daymond John, who wasn't
present — on
Entrepreneur.